First We Quit Our Jobs Read online

  Everywhere we looked, we seemed to be on an unfamiliar planet. The mountains were bigger than those we were used to, even bigger than the Rockies. They were craggier, sharper, younger than those old gently rounded mounds of the East. Even in July many were snow-capped. The streams were either crystal clear and packed with spawning fish, or else they were lifeless and the opaque emerald green of glacial runoff. We slowed down as moose strolled across the highway. Ice-blue glacier fingers oozed down mountains toward us in slow motion. There was no poison ivy here, so I would not be spending this summer in itch hell, as I often had. Snakes, apparently, could not survive the climate either. What a shame. Even the feared and dreaded giant mosquitoes failed to appear.

  As we toodled south on the Glenn Highway, cocky from our recent home-repair success, we decided to push the envelope a little more. We took the Edgerton Cut-off toward McCarthy and the defunct Kennicott Copper Mines. All around us, deep forests encroached more upon the road with each mile. Occasionally a log home would appear, the yard often cluttered with snow machines, pickup trucks under repair, spare airplane tires or pontoons, and other paraphernalia of bush survival. While most places were inhabited, one or two were abandoned and covered with graffiti fiercely decrying the last owner’s unjust run-ins with the authorities. It became clear to us that the tools we used to evaluate unfamiliar terrain—how manicured the lawns were, the tidiness of the driveways—were not useful in a land where staying alive takes priority over lifestyle.

  It was exciting to be in this more remote area, and we appreciated the flexibility of being in an RV. Wherever we were, we were home. As we looked for a place to spend the night, we read about Liberty Falls Recreational Area in our guidebook: “large RV’s and trailers check road before driving in; 5 sites, no water; no camping fee. Berry picking, watch for bears.” It sounded perfect. We pulled off near the tiny turn-off, and I went to scout the situation. Up a hill, beyond a bridge rated for eight tons (we were seven and a half), I saw a picture-postcard campsite. It was next to a stream with a waterfall. I thought we could squeeze into it. I went back and told Sandy to come ahead. Carefully driving the twisting dirt road, he was able to maneuver the Sue into position facing the waterfall. We pulled out our eighteen-foot awning, lawn chairs, and drinks and made ourselves at home. We were exuberant at being on our own, unplugged and unhooked, yet fully prepared to cook up a wonderful meal and stare at the stars with the aid of a telescope and a guidebook. If only we could have stayed up late enough to catch the sunset sometime after midnight.

  Years earlier I had learned to cook out of necessity when my mother died. I was fifteen, and my father had arranged to have grandmotherly Mrs. Weinstock come in to make supper for us. Following several overboiled, underseasoned dinners, I volunteered to take over. Filling up the empty after-school apartment with the noise of egg beaters clanging against bowls and the smell of onions browning in butter made me a little less lonesome. Even then I cared enough about a good meal not to mind taking the time to learn how to make one. How hard could it be? I thought.

  Dad—Pop, as I sometimes called him—bought me The New York Times International Cookbook for encouragement. Lester and Freddy, our friendly neighborhood butchers, always jotted instructions on my package of meat. I was the only kid I knew who came home from school to watch Julia Child on public television. She deserves credit for taking the fear out of cooking for me. So what if she dropped that big slippery fish on the floor? She would just pick it up, wash it off, and keep going. Nothing ever intimidated Julia, as I referred to her after a while. Pop loved her veal scallopini. Fridays we usually ate out (Italian), and mostly we were invited for dinner at some friend’s house on Saturdays. I’d hang out in the kitchen with the hostess and watch her work. I mastered veal with mushrooms and wine, lamb chops, and London broil. What eluded me, however, was mushroom gravy for the latter. I used canned broth or bouillon cubes, onions and mushrooms, following the recipes I found. The results were lumpy and bland. The curse of Mrs. W, perhaps? I cajoled a kid in the neighborhood to be my taster. (His parents had taken to dining fashionably late, or perhaps they merely extended the cocktail hour to two or three, so this growing lad was always hungry and ate anything.) He was kind and encouraged my efforts, but we both knew I had met my culinary Waterloo. Eventually Julia clued me in to the fact that you really need an actual roast or bones from which to make good gravy. For the time being, this was beyond me. Sadder but wiser, I moved on to new challenges. My burgeoning cooking expertise attracted kids to hang out at our house: who else offered up trays of canapés and homemade eggnog for after-school snacks? The lucky ones were invited to stay for suppers of shrimp scampi or Wiener schnitzel—very avant-garde home cooking in those days, but then again I was learning from an international cookbook and Julia, the French chef. It was years before I would master ordinary macaroni and cheese. I continued cooking during college, when the house favorites, in tune with the times, became earthy foods like banana bread.

  Once I began working (I even edited cookbooks for a while), I ran out of gas for cooking. When Sandy married me twenty-something years later, I was a New York career woman. He had become accustomed to dining out and had a strict “no used food” (leftovers) policy. It worked out perfectly, since what I made best for dinner on weekdays was reservations. I could also handle take-out or ordering in. Beyond that, I had the time and inclination to prepare food for friends and family only on weekends. Happily, it became a team effort with Sandy as grill man, baker, and sometime salad chef. We enjoyed preparing feasts together, but I could no sooner have cooked every night than I could have walked naked through Times Square. I simply didn’t have it in me.

  On the road all that changed. First, the expense of eating in restaurants was annoying. Then it was fun stopping at a local market to pick up supplies along with a sense of the town. Finally, although breakfast and lunch were usually on the run, we both enjoyed preparing a leisurely supper together. We preferred a cookout when the weather was fine and saved a few “indoor” recipes for other times. That night we grilled chicken by the falls and had that fine dessert of international renown, s’mores.

  * * *

  The next day we drove a short way down the McCarthy Road, then squeezed through a cut between two rocks so narrow, I had to get out a run ahead to see if we could make it. We could, just barely, but we were flummoxed a little bit farther on, where the dirt road disintegrated to one that could accommodate only small four-wheel-drive vehicles. The land around us looked as dried up as the riverbed we’d crossed. Native fish wheels hung over a trickle of water. I hoped for their sake it would rain soon. We banged a U-y (it’s not easy to make a U-turn in a 29’ 10” vehicle) and aimed south.

  The weather turned mean, looking suspiciously as if it might snow as we approached Thompson Pass, the snowiest place in Alaska. A sign told us the annual record was a monumental 974.5 inches, just over 81 feet. Along the road upside-down L’s towered above us, guides indicating to snowplow drivers where to plow when there were twenty feet or better of snow. The fog, mist, and wind convinced us to pull into a site at Blueberry Lake Campground, which we read would have a great view when the storm subsided. Optimistically, we put on full Gore-Tex gear and went for a hike. It was nasty out. Finding the eponymous lake, we headed over toward a rocky meadow. Little was blooming, and we couldn’t find any blueberries. Every now and then a break in the clouds would offer a tantalizing peek at the alpine-like mountain vista, then hide it again. The cold was seeping through my gear. A few other RVs and tents dotted the scene, but most people were indoors. We ran into a few dog walkers, but we seemed to be the only ones who were outside of our own volition. The weather failed to improve. We opted for bunk games. When I was a kid in camp and we had foul weather, counselors would struggle to think up games and contests to keep us amused. Somehow Sandy and I didn’t have that problem. It was also a good way to keep warm.

  Later on we found a local public radio station that had some good talk and m
usic. We wrote e-mail, saving it for the day when we could actually send it, and read our books. Sandy had raced through Wilderness Seasons, the memoir he’d bought in Whitehorse, and suggested I have a go at it. It was ironic that I’d originally gotten into publishing because I loved books yet as the years went on had had less and less time to read what I wanted. There was always a stack of proposals to read and manuscripts to edit.

  Having the opportunity to read the same book Sandy had and discuss it, like real people, was fabulous. First, however, I had to finish E. The RV was cozy. As all the windows fogged up and the mist grew thicker, we couldn’t tell where inside and outside met. Although the propane heater did an admirable job, the dampness was getting to me. I decided it was time to see what the oven could do. We had never used it, and it took me some time to figure out how to light the thing, but eventually it warmed up. I checked our cookbooks. We had brought along three. Two were well-used favorites: Master Recipes by Stephen Schmidt, a wonderful cook’s bible, and Relax, It’s Only Dinner by Cheryl Merser, a very clever cook who could make a feast out of an empty pantry. The last was a small gift-type book we’d published but I’d never used, called Cupcakes by Cerri Hada. Somehow I’d thought to bring this along, as well as a muffin tin, envisioning just this kind of day. Checking the recipe list against our supplies, I chose orange nut muffins. It wasn’t baked Alaska, but they were tasty, perfumed the air with orange and vanilla, and warmed both the RV and us. Dinner that night was one of our foul-weather contingencies, Sandy’s favorite pasta: a hearty mélange of garlic, onion, crumbled hot sausage, tomato, and cream over rigatoni.

  In the morning the weather cleared, and after a breakfast of homemade muffins, we went on to Valdez (pronounced Valdeez). As we approached, the lush scenery continued to surprise us. Alternating between verdant narrow canyons lined with waterfalls and expansive views of the snowy Chugach, Wrangell, and St. Elias ranges, the Great Land was great indeed.

  It’s a Man Thing

  By the time we got to Valdez, we were ready for a break from driving. We planted ourselves at the water’s edge, facing the expansive natural beauty of the snowy fjord and the geometric man-made grandeur of the pipeline terminus. The view encapsulated the weird juxtaposition that is Alaska. Fifteen feet from our window, a sea otter lolled on his back as he used a rock to crack open some shellfish for lunch. Across the harbor several supertankers lined up to suckle crude oil. It was a picture postcard of man and nature coexisting in Eden. When it worked. When it didn’t, as happened early one morning in March 1989, when the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound just outside this harbor, it was a disaster.

  After more than five thousand miles of driving, we were able to relax for a few days. We unhitched our bikes and went off to find the area’s trails. We pedaled toward the pipeline terminus but didn’t quite make it. Instead we watched as tourists and locals lined up in the shallows at the top of the harbor to fish. RVs would park here for weeks, we were told, at this precious rich spot. It was a deceptive and odd place to catch the salmon that were struggling to find their birthplace in order to spawn: we were downstream from a fish hatchery. Amazing how a fish could find its way “home,” even if it was essentially a test tube.

  After exploring all day, we cruised by the visitor information center. As a New Yorker, it had taken some getting used to, but by now I knew we could leave our bikes without necessarily attaching them to a post with a kryptonite lock. It gave me a tiny knot of discomfort, but I could handle it. (I couldn’t, however, leave the Sue unlocked. I wasn’t that mellow and probably never would be.) At the VC we picked up some brochures and caught a flick about the 1964 Good Friday earthquake. The devastation here had been complete. A 9.2 on the Richter scale, this quake had leveled the old town of Valdez, forcing the creation of the new town site, where we now were, four miles west of the original. The quake had dropped the ritzy residential area of Anchorage into the sea. Earthquake Park was developed in its wake. Yet another example of life’s impermanence, I thought. Perhaps I was musing to myself about this as I left the visitors’ center. Or maybe my legs were wobbly from the day of riding. But somehow, as I flung my left leg over the bike to leave, I heaved a bit too enthusiastically and went completely over the top onto my left side, jamming the bike against my shinbone. People came running out to see if “the lady” (was someone else hurt too?) was okay, as Sandy untangled me from myself. “Fine,” I muttered as I hobbled to a bench. I gently pressed my bone and knew it wasn’t broken, but man, it was killing me. As Sandy ran off to the drugstore to get a chemical ice pack, I laughed to myself and thought I was the only person I knew who could have a bicycle accident standing still.

  Riding a bike is probably an exciting thing to learn when you’re, say, four or five. But when you grow up in Manhattan and you have overprotective parents, the true pleasures of pedaling may not be yours until you’re, say, forty-five. Take me, for example. My parents’ refusal to buy me a bike led directly to my clamoring to ride one and badgering a summer camp counselor to give me a lesson or two. Being averagely agile, it shouldn’t have been a problem to maneuver on, if not master, a bike the way my twelve-year-old cohorts did. Practicing on my own one afternoon, however, I went down a short gravelly hill that veered off toward the left. Unfortunately, I veered off to the right, resulting in severe lacerations plus the sickening sensation that my parents had been right. Bikes were not for me. I could have all the books, Bach, and ballet I wanted, but bikes were for kids in Iowa, wherever that was.

  Years passed. Plenty of other things surfaced to cause agita between me and my parents—sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll. Riding a bike seemed to be, if ever I thought about it, just another childhood thing that was over, even if it had never really begun. So the earth spun around another decade or so, and I found myself at a beach house on Nantucket that I had rented with my cousin, Claire, her two kids, and seventeen of our best friends. Nantucket is a lovely island, thirty miles or so off Cape Cod, very beachy and very preppy, and to some extent it still has the veneer of being not overly developed. One way this quaintness is encouraged is by the renting of bikes. Numerous paths around the island service those who like to think they’ve found a way back to a simpler time.

  It wasn’t so simple for me. There were still clumps of scar tissue here and there on my body to prove it. Many of our housemates brought their own bikes and chatted over dinner about touring the next day. When the time came to saddle up, I tried hiding in the bathroom, hoping they would leave without me. No luck. Barry, a dear friend of mine yet somehow a natural jock (I don’t exaggerate—he ran marathons), and a few of the others decided to ride to the far end of the island. I disappeared. Barry came looking for me. He banged on the bathroom door. “Come on, let’s go.” I was mute. Mature too. “I know you’re in there.” I hated him at that minute. “It’ll be fun. You’ll see. It’s a flat, easy ride.” I hated him and my parents for getting me into this humiliating scene. He banged some more. I could hear the shuffling of several dozen feet. Someone else knocked, needing to use the john. I vacated my sanctuary with great reluctance.

  On a rented bike that terrified me and killed my butt, I puffed along. Far behind the others, I ranted to myself about the not-flatness of the island. The little bit of traffic we had to deal with overwhelmed me into near paralysis. I thought my head would explode from the heat, my lungs from the lack of air. I didn’t sweat—I turned red. The scenery was gorgeous, and I loved going down the not-hills. On the way back we stopped for sodas. I had figured out how the gears worked. (The last time I had tried this, there were no gears.) By the time the group arrived back at the house, I hated Barry less. In time I would pedal parts of the New York marathon route with him as he trained. By then I had bought my own bike, with a seat that didn’t hurt quite so much, and had learned to conquer traffic my own way. I insisted we go out at six on Sunday mornings. In the following years Sandy and I had pedaled many miles together.

  Now Sandy ret
urned from the drugstore and applied the ice pack to my shin. The pain seemed to localize, and I could see a purplish bruise but nothing more. Luckily we had only a mile or so to ride back to camp. Once there I rested some more. As the pain gave way to hunger, I knew I was okay. Someone recommended the Totem Inn for dinner. I managed to pedal there without too much trouble. Good thing too. Otherwise we never would have discovered the most perfect halibut and chips on earth. I had first eaten halibut in my college dorm cafeteria. It looked like a perfect white rectangle and tasted exactly like lukewarm, reconstituted, dried Styrofoam. I’d avoided it ever since. Sandy’s impressions were similar, and we only ordered it now because the waitress was so enthused about it. The platter placed in front of us had mounds of batter-dipped, deep-fried, moist fresh fish and piles of fries. A little hot sauce, lemon, and ketchup, and we were in Alaskan heaven.

  It was a pleasant change to be in one place for a few days. Somehow having a day of lousy weather didn’t seem so cruel, and it gave us a chance to take care of two important things: e-mail and laundry. Despite all of our efforts to set up a mobile office, we were often foiled by lack of cellular service or of reciprocity of service with our carrier. This was especially true in Canada. Back in the States we’d hoped for better service, and at the Sea Otter RV Park we really lucked out. This was the only place we stayed that was equipped with individual offices. Each space (larger than a booth, smaller than a room) had two stools, a counter where you could write or put a computer, and a phone/phone line that accepted local, credit card, or 800-number calls. We were in business at last. Once or twice a day while we were there, we’d set up shop to pick up or send mail. Sandy, the numbers guy who swore he couldn’t write, had started keeping a journal that he originally sent to a short list of friends.